Wahle, Axel

Abstract [en]

The purpose of this report is to present proposals of organizational measurers for Halmstad Fire department. By observing today’s organization from a by-standers point of view, as a representative of a third party, the hope is that this report will present a new point of view of today’s organization and the problems that it faces. The fire chief in Halmstad, Hans Ekberg, has imposed the organization to examine themselves and come up with proposals of actions against these problems; the actions will serve as a basis for the next municipal plan of action for accident protection. The assignment is divided into seven questions to be answered where this report will focus on three of these. This is done by answering five questions; the design of today’s organization, what are the problems it faces, what is the future of Halmstad municipality, what measures are necessary, urgent, or desirable, and what other questions need to be answered regarding operational capability? The background to this report is that Halmstad fire department like many other fire departments today already have or in the near future will have the need to recruit large quantities of Retained firefighters for their stations located outside of the county seat. This is because many companies in small towns move their business elsewhere, especially to larger towns in their vicinity. This leads to many job opportunities that before could be combined with a position as a retained firefighter now are none existent. In order to keep the operational abilities in the towns afflicted this way will in the long wrong put a bigger strain on those who serve as a retained firefighter and ultimately reduce their willingness to serve. In other towns the operational abilities will have to be lowered due to severe lack of personnel, instead of removing the readiness in these towns. The work leading up to this report has been conducted in parallel with a project team from Halmstad fire department, where a total of ten people from different parts of the organization have participated, with personnel from both full-time and part-time. The basis for background information on Halmstad fire department is the current plan of action for accident protection and statistics compiled between 2004-2012 and 2013 for individual station areas. This information is been complemented by attending meetings with the project group, interviews with other members of staff and other fire departments and also by visiting other fire departments. What are the consequences for the organization as a whole during these circumstances? That is the question this bachelor thesis has tried to answer by presenting four recommendations to the reader of this report. These recommendations are based on current operational capability for Halmstad, also thru studying statistics of accidents from the region and by taking the future master plan for Halmstad County into consideration. The first of these recommendations is to increase the number of fulltime firefighters at the main station I Halmstad, with this increase in personnel it would most likely be easier to cope with reduced operational ability for the part time fire stations and also easier to cope with more large scale operations. By giving the firefighters in the whole county better conditions to perform exercises and training they will be given a better chance to cope with the ever increasing workload. A continued and broader use of first emergency responder is also considered as one of the best recommendations to ensure a better future not only for the fire department, but also for the community as a whole by decreasing the time to first response. Due to overuse of big and versatile fire trucks vehicle fleet is severely out dated, there are simply too many for the economy to keep up. By switching to smaller, cheaper fire trucks on some locations in the county it is believed that this problem would solve its self in the long run.There is also a discussion about the need for clearer directives from the politicians on their demands regarding the operational abilities for the fire department as a whole. All the proposed organizational measurers can’t be put in to action all at once but would rather happen over a longer period of time, and what can be said about the operational capability in the mean-time?